


Captain America Never Existed

by theunremarkable



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1940s, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky's internal voice is pretty self depricating, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The First Avenger, Explicit Language, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Not Captain America: The First Avenger Compliant, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Steve Rogers is Not Captain America, WWII
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28661127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theunremarkable/pseuds/theunremarkable
Summary: Captain America never existed.But Steve Rogers did. And that's enough for Bucky Barnes.~Inspired by the line, "You're an experiment. You're going to Alamogordo" (Chester Phillips, CA:TFA). This is what happens when the tale of The First Avenger is off its axis by a few degrees.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 21
Kudos: 125





	1. Chapter 1

Reality is…

Reality is hard, it’s finnicky, it slips through his mind like the smoke from the last of his rationed cigarette he’s watching swirl away into front of him.

Reality is often difficult for James Barnes to discern, he decides on, all poet like. He stops short of speaking to himself or a conjured memory, of saying, _‘See, you ain't the only artist round 'ere’,_ because he’s done well to meld his mind and reality today, and he’s only moments away from being able to speak the words to it's intended face. He’s so close he can taste New York better than the tobacco.

He's close to _home;_ all its physical landmarks, but more importantly the people who occupy it. Even as important as they are, he selfishly weeps for the chance to be himself. Just the word New York feels the pressure lifting from his shoulders, his mind, his heart; he can break a little and no one will die from it. Because even he knows it, surprised as much that he could hide it even this far, but not only has he cracked, he’s goddam split and splintered, his atoms just shy of being dust and blown across the universe.

After two years on the front, there could be reasons for that.

There _is_ a reason.

Course, that reason is so heavily redacted and spoken in codes and buried deeper than the grave he should be in already that he’s sure that all the secrecy surrounding him is part of why he doesn’t know up from down sometimes. The reason why he feels like he’s dreaming when he’s awake, and only sees what should be his day when he’s asleep. They all tell him he shouldn’t exist; them events that left him, well, not him, never got inked in history.

And he doesn’t. Exist, that is. James Buchanan Barnes doesn’t exist. Bucky is long gone, but that was quite some time before James. He’s not even let himself think it before now for fear his thoughts might leak out his cracked head and he’ll get this homecoming taken away from him as well.

It's true; Bucky Barnes is dead.

But with all the truth and good that he's coming back to, he's not quite worried, and he’s quite looking forward to getting back to a semblance of the man who left.

Only, the proper reality of it all, one that definitely has never been penned to page but has been thought about far too hard and far too long, is that this whole conundrum started long before the RMS Queen Mary shipped him outta New York on June 15th, 1943.

1933, to be exact, not many months before his seventeenth birthday, when Becca skipped home singing how she caught butterflies in her stomach and felt warm in her toes, a calm and excited all at once, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t breathe, ‘ _couldn’t shut up’_ Bucky had thought, but out loud he laughed and called her a sap. George Barnes had said she was far too young to be thinking about marriage, but Winifred had cupped her cheek and said, “That, my dearest, is love.”

Those five words stopped Bucky’s earth, spun it round the other way so fast he thought he was going to get flung off into the setting sun like a poor imitation of Icarus.

He cornered Becca after, asking what the hell had squirmed into her blood, was she drunk and who snuck her the liquor, but she just she giggled and sighed, “Maybe, Bucky. Maybe I’m drunk on love. It feels much the same.”

From then, his world turned backwards, his head on the wrong way, and that’s when this whole reality business started to niggle at him.

Cuz Bucky had been drunk, and he’d been with girls, but none of it felt like that.

Not unless it was _Steve_.

Bucky’d never thought about it too hard - course he hadn’t, Steve was his best friend, his best pal, his best guy but not in _that_ sense - so he’d never needed to wonder why he felt all those things around him. He just did, and they got on with it.

That warmth Becca felt in her toes? It was nothing compared to how Steve’s skin burnt through clothing against Bucky when they slept close together in the one bed though the couch cushions were set up when they were young, and even when they bought an apartment and winter sometimes bought nights that just couldn’t be slept through without a human heart beating beside you. Heat followed wherever Steve was, wherever he existed, and sometimes Bucky thought he gave the same back to Steve, maybe in a different way, when he would slide his popsicle toes between Bucky’s slighter less frozen calves. Butterflies? Bucky had a whole jungle of hummingbirds in his stomach, his heart, flapping too loud and that was the reason his mind was so loud all the time. Drunk of love? Well-

Truth was, Bucky got intoxicated just at the thought of Steve, addicted to the hours they spent together and felt a pain worse than a whole bottle’o whiskey when they were apart. So, according to Becca’s new revelation, Bucky Barnes was downright, utterly, completely, wholly in love with Steve Rogers.

The songs finally made sense. Art looked different. Even watching strangers on the street became beautiful rather than a time passer to quell the boredom. The reason why Bucky did the things he did, he understood.

Cuz he, Bucky Barnes, was in love.

And the world told him he was wrong for it.

He wasn’t just wrong, for loving a man, not any man but _Steve_ , but it was a disease. God said so, and so did science, that’s why they had the pills and electricity, castrations and lobotomies, and confessions. Bucky knew that was a lie; he knew sickness. It was a rattling breath, it was phlegm drowning lungs and throats and eventually soaking bedsheets, it was shivering that nudged the bed a whole three inches from where it usually stood. It was a sparse headstone with not enough money for a line from God on it. What Bucky felt for Steve, it wasn’t illness, not even the horrid part that suffocated his heart even now with the relief that it was Sarah Rogers who was taken by TB and not her son.

But Bucky wasn’t the only one who knew this. Which is why loving a man was also a crime.

Cuz some clever minds in senators’ offices and the like decided that if science and God couldn’t fix what wasn’t actually a disease, then the next best deterrent was imprisonment for the corruption and lawbreaking.

Only Bucky also knew crime. He’d seen a man beaten to death in front of him, unable to tear his eyes away from a body hit so hard it was splattering liquified pieces into the air around it at only sixteen years old, and never quite forgotten it. He’d sicked on himself, couldn’t stop the trembling, couldn’t keep his voice steady to talk to the police, couldn’t hear anything other than the squelch of a breaking body and the moans of a soul leaving it’s body until his father picked him up from the station. Bucky couldn’t move stiff limbs, his own rigor mortis setting in, until his father slapped him upside the head and said he was to speak of it to no one else in the family. He could only nod when George Barnes asked him if Sarah was working a night shift and he could stay at Steve’s instead. And Steve, the crime that was apparently loving Steve, had done nothing that was like the crime he just came from. Steve was gentle when the perpetrators were harsh, he was quiet where they yelled, he wiped away the blood that had sprayed closed onto Bucky rather than be the cause of it in the first place. Steve wasn’t a repeat offender, killing two more before they were finally caught, in fact Steve was even careful about his own fights for a few months before he just couldn’t help himself, and tried harder to hide it afterwards because they both knew it was different than it was before.

None of that, was fluttering hearts or heated flushes, tranquillity or the idea of going to a home that wasn’t a place but a person.

So when Bucky was at his happiest, enjoying being in love like man and woman got to, the world told him he was officially sick, a criminal, and a queer.

He’d rolled it over his tongue a few times, Bucky Queer Barnes, James Fairy Barnes, only it did nothing but make him laugh. He carried on his life like he usually did, and so did Steve, because no one knew a damned thing different. He didn’t have medical or arrest records of it, so he just enjoyed his life cuz damn, it was a good one.

But every so often something would happen that would remind him that his little world was wrong, even when it felt right. The evening they came home from the movie theatre, where Bucky leaned in close in the dark under pretense of whispering things he thought Steve might miss with his eyes or his ears, there was a raid on a dance hall in Greenwich Village which left one dead and four arrested. The night Bucky threw his arms around Steve’s shoulders on a walk home because Steve thought he was drunker than he was and Bucky decided kept his half sober mouth shut, they heard the news that Jimmy Williams was propositioned in an alley by a sneaky cop who only did so to catch him out and send him off to the fruit cake factory. And then, of course, there were the regular family dinners in which Bucky’s Ma couldn’t help but prod the two males present why they weren’t steady with any of the girls they were seen with. Rather, that Bucky was seen with and Steve was seen trailing behind.

After those events, Bucky would go to bed with questions about which life was real, and when he turned those over in his mouth, he didn’t laugh. He tried hard to be as stubborn as Steve, to stand up for who he was no matter what the world thought, but he was nothing like Steve. He was the opposite, in all ways. He was dark haired and tanned, Steve was sun kissed and fair skinned. He was athletic, and Steve could barely make it up the stairs to their apartment. He couldn’t do anything but cry and vomit at the killers in the street, when Steve probably would have tried to give as good as he got. His heart beat strong and steady, most especially around Steve, but Steve’s was a soft flutter, as bird-like as his bones.

He was queer and Steve was not.

So sometimes, Bucky got confused in himself, and the world, and had to stumble around blindly between a blend of the reality. 

Course, Bucky’s a now living testament that imprisonment and medical procedures could actually change a person enough to be someone else, but he’s sure as heck ain’t gonna let a higher up know that, yes, extreme torture does do things to a person. Only he’s pretty sure it didn’t change _that_ about him. In fact, Steve was probably the only thing that got him through the war. It’s been almost two years since he said goodbye for the first time, _ever_ , to Steve, and Bucky still feels the same as he does as that day. That day, was a few months shy of ten years after his revelation, and that day felt just like the first, sixteen and in the kitchen. He’d never said goodbye, not even during those few nights when Sarah called the priest, or the time at the hospital.

Well, he feels the same about Steve. He’s down a limb and his muscles are tired in a way they’ve never been. His mind is on overdrive all the time, thinking of plans and looking for snipers or bombs and wanting to protect everyone around him until its not; until he blinks and a few hours have passed without him knowing. His heart surely beats the same and for one person only. And Steve’s not going to maker him sicker, or commit crimes, and definitely won’t be a part of Bucky’s sinning.

In fact, he somewhat hopes Steve might fix him a bit. Whether Steve fills the cracks and smooths the edges of the soldier returning home, or helps with the things that Bucky vehemently denies he needs help with being down a limb, or even if just being around Steve causes the conundrum of what’s wrong or right to outweigh what the soldier now screams about during the day, Bucky’s not sure.

And he doesn’t care.

He just wants Steve to look after him, like all those times Bucky did for him - not that that's why he did it of course, and not that him and Steve work off a balance system, but still - he reckons he's got a bit of time in the bank to be cared for. Just for a short while, a few weeks max, where Bucky doesn’t have to worry about anything other than what time Steve will be home from work, and if he can figure out how to cook the meal Steve deserves and Bucky can now afford with his hindrance. He wants to leaf through all the sketches he’s missed over the years, and then study them again until they’re the only thing his eyes will see, awake or asleep. He’s looking forward to going to dance halls, maybe one of the less busy ones that’s not so loud, and not just yet, to sit at the bar with Steve because he’s sure Steve still hasn’t picked up dancing yet and Bucky doesn’t even want to try with only one arm. Maybe they can practice together, in their apartment, and meet somewhere in the middle between Bucky's previous brilliance and Steve's god awful two left feet. Bucky's desperate to go to sleep on a mattress that’s pokey and cold, and not even notice because there’s the sound of snoring outta a big nose and wheezing breath fighting through scarred lungs to calm him, not yelling and gun shots.

Bucky thinks he won’t have to wait much longer, standing on the deck of the faithful Grey Ghost that swept him away in the first place. It’s been ten days aboard, and he thinks it might be no more than an hour until the boat hits the solid ground he sees in front that approaching quickly, and not quick enough.

Again, the cool fingers of doubt tickle the base of his skull. Is time slowing and stopping, or is it rushing towards him? Is it actually time, or is it his mind warping things? Actually, as the cigarette smoke disappears and the boat seems to freeze on the water, none of it feels real. This. America. In front of him. 

Not just in front of him, there, _here_ , as the hunker of the ship moors up to the very docks he parted from. He’s done it again, separated his mind from his body because he’s last sure that they were still some time away, but there’s that jitter in his heart and clenching of his stomach that’s not adrenaline of pants wetting fear, but _excitement_ , he recognises. A feeling that, before eleven days ago when he’d got the telegram that Germany surrendered and their part of the war was over, the world following suite soon, he’d not felt since taking Steve in his arms at the World Fair.

It didn’t feel real. This was his reality, which could be a dream or a nightmare, and with every passing second he expected to wake up on that cool metal. But ten days on the water, and he hadn’t. And each time he woke up, he woke without an arm, and that was enough reminder. Table, both arms. After table, one arm. 

Now, as the crewmen lower the ramp and military bodies press in close around him, all wanting to be the first to run down it, Bucky grabs at his left, and sure enough, there's nothing until his hand trails up and reaches just below his shoulder. It grounds him the way he'd hoped the cigarette would, enough to remember to reach down and pick up his duffel. He doesn't need it, there's nothing in here that he cares to remember, certainly not letters. He tries not to think about the letters. Because it doesn't matter how many he does, or doesn't have, because anything he wants to say or hear, can be done the minute he drags himself onto land.

And into the press of a faceless crowd, a sea of people lined up against the docks he used to slave on, doesn't know who he is, what he's done, how many lives he's saved nor how many he’s taken. They don’t know what he's sacrificed, though they can probably guess some just by looking at him. They cheer regardless, waving their handkerchiefs and signs and wearing smiles probably not reserved for him, but he steals them all the same. It's been so long and he knows that the smiles his family will give him will be forced and laced with pity for the first while, so he basks in whatever the strangers will offer him.

Including the noise. Everyone is shouting, thousands of them all at once, layering into a roar, so Bucky centers himself and calls upon his curse, courtesy of the special sort of Nazis, to do him some good.

It's no surprise it's Becca's voice he can pinpoint in the crushing crowd, not long after is Charlotte's, and then a bubbling he thinks might be his mother's tears. Bucky weaves through a crowd, ignoring the claustrophobia it causes to squeeze himself through people, foreign people, touching all around, until he reaches a pocket that shares air with his family.

It takes a second for his vision to settle, this could be a false reality for all he knows, because they're all there, his three baby sisters, his mother crying uncontrollably like he’d expected, and his father, the proudest he’s ever seen and even his eyes shining. All of them.

Except Steve.

It hurts, he admits, hurts like the ache of his missing arm but he wants, desperately, to enjoy this moment, what might be his first chance at happiness in two years, so he passes the water in his own eyes as a product of joy, of reunion, just like his family before him.

Lottie is the first to slam into him, still small enough to dodge around her siblings and under George's arm, but strong enough now that her grip is tight and he suspects he’ll have bruises on his stomach from where her strong Barnes nose is pressed into it. Alice is not far behind, she never is where Lottie’s involved, with just as much strength, and when his Ma joins, it’s not hard, but soft and warm. Bucky hasn’t felt warm in so long.

Becca and his father stand back, he knows not out of lack of love, but maturity. Besides from the letters to Steve, Becca was the one he felt he divulged the barest of his true, new feelings to, his issues with touch, and pressure, people, all without reason why. She'd accepted them without question, and told him she would accept him too, even as opposite to who he once was. And George knows, because at some point, it was him in this situation, a son home from war, tho in Bucky's case, a father. They wait, for the long minutes until Bucky pushes half his family off to greet the other half. It’s possibly only the second hug George Barnes has ever given him, and he’s glad that it too seems to go on for much longer than a normal hold would, but also relieved when he lets go.

And finally, it’s Becca’s turn. Bucky doesn’t have favourites, of course he doesn’t, but he’s always been closest to Becca, not just because she’s closest in age, but, like Alice and Lottie, he and Becca often get mistaken as twins. There’s only one person in the world who knows him better than Becca does, and he’s not here.

“Steve?” Bucky whispers to her as she comes in for a quick embrace, less awkward than everyone else with the arm, but he's quickly pulled away by his mother again, just chanting his name over and over again. He turns back to Becca, she mustn’t’ve heard him over the noise, her face schooled into something, he's not sure, into a wobbly smile, managing to hear, "I'm so glad you're back," before his mother squishes him again, then pushes him back to drink in the sight of him.

They stare, of course they do, Winnie crying when it sinks in just why she can wrap two of her own arms around him easier than when he left. Alice looks at his shoulder a little fearfully, Lottie looks sad, but Becca acknowledges it, then looks elsewhere, and George ignores it entirely. Bucky shifts, and lets them, he’d rather get it over with here, than in an awkward silence in a small lounge room, where he can at least watch other two-armed soldiers reunite with their families in a better manner than he. He ignores the ones where sweetheart's welcomes are being performed, but they seem to be everywhere as his eyes skim faster than they used to, so he shifts again, and takes to staring at his shoes. 

The novelty of reunion quickly wears off; the crowd is oppressive, the noise drowning him, fresh air soon runs out when shared between the thousands, the feeling of skin on his and eyes everywhere, it’s all, it’s all –

Bucky looks up and catches his father’s eye, and prays, that he understands. He almost sobs like Winnie when George gives an imperceptible nod, and pulls his mother off him and steers the family back towards their car. Again, he can hide the tears as relief for his family, but the entire drive back to New York, once the streets become familiar but almost dreamlike, he wonders if his father thinks he is weak, like the time he did with Bucky’s first dead body.

He’s done so well, this whole time, at hiding his nightmares, his battle fatigue and something he reckons is a little more than the two combined. He's pushed it all down, but that’s because he had a purpose, a goal, a sense of being. A _responsibility_ , that if he didn’t have his shit together, he’d be the trigger finger for the bullets marked for his own men. But now, in the car with the constant reassurance from his mother that his work is done, that he can rest, he feels it bubbling up. He clamps him mouth down hard, there's blood from where his own damn tongue got in the way, but as long as he swallows it down, no one is sure to find out. Not an hour home and he's already hiding things.

Fuck.

It isn't good. Neither is the war, but now that the difference is beginning to become distinctive, Bucky has a fleeting longing for where he just came from.

George eyes him through the rear-view mirror, and prompts Lottie and Alice to talk about the dance halls that are reopening; it keeps them talking the whole way home. He smiles taut through the chatter, swallowing down the lump in his throat that doesn't go down easy despite the blood. As his Pa planned, Bucky doesn’t have a chance to say a word between dress ideas and partners and the songs he might not have heard yet. They’re either side of him so it’s all encompassing, and overwhelming in a different way, but god bless his family, the moment he begins to feel those emotions, Becca reaches over to squeeze his hand tight. It’s on the edge of pain, and that’s what he needs. 

Pain, he knows, is reality.

New York seems the same, it certainly didn't get bombed or famished. The people on the streets don't seem to know death like those he saw in Italy, and Austria, and Germany, and England, amongst the countries he made his way through. They don't seem concerned for their safety being outside, in fact some of them dare to laugh with each other. 

This, he reminds himself, biting on his tongue again as he can't reach his for his lost arm with his only remaining in Becca's tight grip, is what his new reality is going to be.

It seems the only thing that has changed is him, as he stares up at his family’s house. The front step still hasn’t been fixed, the pavement still dirty and hot, kitchen window open with the curtain flapping out to let in the breeze. He's glad there's no pie on the window, otherwise he'd think it was a picture from a children's book, and his mind would be muddled again.

It is, a little, as he stays staring at the house for longer than his family must think is right. Lottie takes his sparse bag from his hand and hauls it up the steps, Becca closes the car door for him, and George Barnes clasps the back of his neck.

And then, before he knows it, he’s home.

_Home._

“Settle in. Sit down, here I can help you with your coat,” Winnie fusses and helps him, he doesn’t need it but maybe she does. “What would you like?” She calls back, already walking away, to the fridge. “I bought a roast, oh dear it was terribly difficult to get my hands on, but Mrs Finklebaster- you remember her, dear? Well, she’s friends with a butcher and when we explained, oh well, they were terribly accommodating, I did say you’ll stop by, when you’re ready, of course-”

Bucky stares around the room, the familiar room, a room he never thought he’d see again, exactly the same, save for his large service picture on the mantlepiece. He's not sure he should think of it as his, because he's not that person anymore, not really, and having it so proudly displayed will only make the difference more obvious, and painful for all of them. He shifts a little from foot to foot, thank god he's still got both of those for this moment only, and takes his hat off so his hand might have something to do now Becca's not holding it and Lottie's taken his bag.

“I-, dear, come, sit,” Winnie admonishes as Bucky stands in the spot she’d left him, just inside the door. 

He can't though, he can't stop the fidgeting, twirling his hat with one hand until the shaking is too much. Stopped in the middle of the door frame, it drops, and all members in the room reach forward to help, pick it up.

“Don't-,” Bucky cuts them off, sharp, pulling the hat roughly from the ground. “Sorry,” he sighs, at their expressions, ranging from hurt to encouraging smiles and pitiful eyes. They don't know what it's like to be him. But he doesn't know what it's been like to be them. Doesn't know what it's like to have been-

Takes a deep breath, once straightened up, hat back in his nervous hand, crumpling under his grip, he mumbles to the ground, back at his shoes, his trusty shoes, “I was rather hoping Steve would be here. I haven't-. He stopped writing.”

There’s silence to greet him. It's thick in the air, but he was made to be better, to be stronger, and he's strong enough to whip his head up, swallowing hard at the identical expressions on his family’s faces. It’s not something he’s seen before, and he wants it to stop. Now.

“Sit dear,” his mother gestures to the armchair, that does look a little different, reupholstered maybe, and clasps her own hands tight. 

“No.”

“Bucky, won’t you just sit?” Winnie tries again, but won't meet his eyes. No one will.

“No,” he says adamant, through his fear. His mother never called him Bucky _‘Stupid, immature name. I called you James for a reason, so James it will be,’_ with a good whack on the head. It didn’t stop him. Or anyone else, until it was only her calling him James. He’d thought about her a lot, chanting his name and numbers in-

In any case, it should be welcome, after he hasn’t been called Bucky in so long, but it only does more to amplify his terror. “What's going on?” His hand scrunches the hat, he’ll never be able to wear it as part of his dress uniform again, but in this moment, this awful moment, he doesn’t care. "I-, tell me."

Doesn’t care for anything more than the following words;

“Steve’s dead.”


	2. Chapter 2

He just stares at Becca, wondering why the words ever left her mouth, what could possibly compel her to say them in the first place. There’s no logic, no emotion, he’s just numb, his brain scrambling to heat itself to begin working again. It takes a moment, under the averted gazes of everyone but Becca, who's eyes have started to shine.

“I don’t-. I don’t understand,” he gulps. “Becs,” he breathes. 

“Not long after we got your letter, the first one, he was-,” she mouths wordlessly for a moment, then looks at her clasped hands. "He-." Her hands do nothing apparently helpful, so she places them behind her ramrod straight back - parade rest, almost a stance Bucky is used to seeing - as she looks to her mother for help. 

“Well, dear, he was-,” 

Winnie too struggles for a description, an explanation, and even George Barnes’s hardened face softens a little at perhaps the memory, or his own son’s reaction right now. “He thought you were dead, Bucky. We all did,” Becca says tiredly, the words all encompassing. 

“But I’m not.”

“We didn’t know that, Bucky. You have to understand, we thought you were dead for a long time."

He doesn't understand.

Becca doesn't seem to be able to stand anymore, her legs as heavy as her voice. She takes a deep breath, and starts. "The first letter came on the 17th of November. Steve was around for supper, we were having Alice's birthday early so she could spend the day with friends. We didn't get the next not until December 30. That was over a month, Bucky, we believed you dead. I don't know what happened, why it took you-," she takes another breath, the exhale this time shaky. "That was far enough time for us to hold a funeral for you, though we had it within the week we found out. Steve-,” She grapples for words again, and Bucky swallows, almost as difficult to push it down as it is for Becca to get it out. “He was distraught, I suppose. We all were. But he was so upset, Bucky, I'd never seen him like that. He really wasn't quite himself. And it was during a particularly wet winter, there was a bout of influenza across America, so bad the papers and the doctors called it an epidemic. I kept going around, every day after the service, to make sure he was warm enough, was eating enough, but he soon asked me to stop. Just for a bit, while he took it all in. Said it was difficult, the reminder, of you and I being so alike. So I allowed him that, just for a week,” Becca admits, “And then I started back up. I knew you wouldn't want him to be alone. I could hear you in my head, wouldn’t let me goddam sleep, so goddam annoying even when you were dead, Bucky-, Oh don't, Ma, I can say it like that now, because he's not. So I kept going round, but he never answered after that day. One day Mrs Johnson came out, because I banged so loud I apparently disrupted all of the building, and said he’d gone away.”

There’s no saving the hat at all now.

“She’d seen him only the week I left him alone. Not for long, but long enough for her to meet the doctor with him and a lady she supposed was a nurse, and for him to say he was going away for some treatment and he’d paid the rent in advance until February, even though it was only just December. I tried all the hospitals I could, but he wasn't at any, and Mrs Johnson was in such a fluster by it all she never got to ask. I swear I checked, Bucky, every single one of them, and all the doctors houses. I even went to all the way to Elizabeth because that’s where they had a German doctor. Mrs Johnson said specifically his doctor had a German accent. I did try my best with the sanitariums, but, you know about those better than I, I suppose, so of course I had no luck there. I tried for Christmas, but there was no answer. I went back to the apartment the minute we got the letter saying you were alive, to leave him a copy for when he came back, but Mrs Johnson told me not to come around again. She said that, that all these men in uniforms had packed up his stuff late one night and informed her that the apartment was free, she could rent it how she wished from now on. She asked about the treatment, and they kept mum, but she made up some tirade about raising him, though I suppose she sort of did, and one of the men took pity I suppose. He told her it didn’t work. They left, and she nor us ever saw him again. So, I suppose, that's it.”

That’s it.

That’s all Steve’s life surmounted to, in the end. A simple speech of 'I don’t knows' and 'I tried' and-

Bucky turns on his heel, and up the stairs, to the room he thinks is his but doesn’t care if it no longer is.

Through the shock, the most overwhelming emotion he can identify is shame at his stupidity.

He should have known.

Bucky had _always_ known, when Steve was getting sick, even before he did, and known when he was on the mend. Bucky’d known the priest was wrong that time at fifteen when Sarah asked him to come late one afternoon because she didn’t believe Steve would live through the night. He knew that they couldn't go swimming in March even though it was meant to be warming up, because Steve would and did get a cold. Bucky had a sense for all things Steve, but he didn’t know _this._

And he should have.

Because even without his Stevie-sense, it was obvious; Bucky hadn’t a letter from Steve in over a year. Steve would never not write. Hell, Bucky thinks if the mail stopped, or if his job ended up so covert that he wouldn't get mail anymore, that Steve might've swum across the Atlantic and marched the letters himself to Austria just to make sure Bucky received them.

But when Bucky came to on a cot somewhere near somewhere Allied, with one arm gone and barely a brain left, he had a stack high of sixteen letters from the grace period where no one knew what the devil’s hell actually happened to anyone in the 107th, and no one bothered to send home about MIA’s. After six weeks, years, eternities of that hell, sixteen letters were a greater gift that his life itself.

He knew it’d take more time still for the news to reach back home that he was alive, even more when the medics decided to withhold the news in case Bucky did actually die on them like he looked he was going to. That, in the grand scheme of things, hardly seemed to matter, the old words were enough, even as crumpled and illegible as Bucky made them from reading them countless times.

When Bucky was well enough, he wrote his own letters, a brief sorry about the mix up to his family, a much longer one to Steve confessing his fear, his terror, what had actually happened as much as he could, how he was afraid that even if his body did, that he’d never come home. He’d laid bare more of his soul into that letter than he did on the table, and that was, that was-

Then of course, came the realisation that neither his body nor his mind were going to be able to go home yet, not with what he knew, what he could do, and who he could help. And not with the offer he was made.

So Bucky had to send out another letter before any new had come through, to say that he was staying. And why. He tried as best he could to write that he’d been promoted, high and quick, to a strategic position since he wasn’t much of a shot anymore, leaving out exactly why he wasn't. He driveled some shit about how when they asked if he could help some more and he thought of all the men, the boys, who hadn’t made it out, his duty to his country and his fallen comrade’s families, well, what was he to do?

It was all a lie. 

His whole existence in the army was a _lie_ , from the moment he was drafted but spun some similar shit to convince his family he enlisted, to when Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th died in a weapons factory in Austria, to even now, his false existence as the ~~honourably discharged Captain Burnes~~ simple civilian James Barnes.

Anyways, the truth would have been redacted, and since he had to use his right hand for absolutely everything now, he saved himself the bother of writing it out pointlessly.

When the letters back did come, his Ma’s was barely legible with its shaky words and blotted ink, Becca’s read of confusion and anger though he saw the love between the lines, and his father offered a congratulations on the promotion. Alice and Lottie coupled theirs together to save on post and even at sixteen and nineteen, he thinks they were too young to understand or react fully.

And no letter from Steve.

Bucky thought he was angry. Angry at how much Bucky never told him about his thoughts of war, but decided to in a letter, cowardly, from so far away. Or the well right to be angry at the deception of death. Or perhaps, he was angry that Bucky didn’t come home. Bucky definitely didn’t blame him.

But all he wanted, was a letter, a word, a drawing, _saying_ he was angry. Or whatever else Steve was.

None ever came.

Then, with the lie that Bucky kept up, came a lot of secrecy, and then the letters came few and far between, even from his family. He could probably count on the remaining hand he had how many he’d received since that first responding to his promotion. It was no one’s fault, Bucky would rather command the men when he could see them, than from an office in England. Post was hard in the middle of a trench, in the middle of nowhere, or at base camps that technically didn’t exist. Even when his brief furloughs came around Britain, he found he didn’t want them; the more he did in the war, the quicker it would all be over. And there was no point travelling without Steve, so gave up all the breaks he was offered after the first one, and worked the whole time through. So the lack of letters hurt, but was understandable, and what kept Bucky going was the idea of coming home. So he willed himself on knowing that surely, soon, it had to all be over.

And over it was.

Is.

Completely.

Bucky doesn't come out of his room for two days.

He doesn't do anything much more than exist. He can't. He just lies, in the corner of the room where he doesn't quite fit, only enough to curl his legs up before his dresser takes spot. Once he’d discovered it, that his head was protected by one wall, his back the other, the solid wood of his clothes drawer to protect his feet, and he could still watch the door, he’s not moved. The torture taught him that. That he can stay, strapped in the same place, for days, weeks even, past months, and even then, he won’t die. Not like Steve.

Bucky doesn’t even cry. There’s nothing in him to cry. He just lays there, still. It’s not a problem; he’s laid still in the same spot for longer. He thinks. He can’t be sure; it was hard to tell time in a windowless basement. It’s easier here, with three knocks a day on a locked door with desperate pleas and choked back sobs at what he assumes is meal times, the rising and falling of the sun, and the shuffled movements of the rest of the house.

All those times he thought Steve was going to die, at least Bucky was there, to ease the way, to let him know the last thing was that he was loved. And not only was Steve alone and likely scared, but he might have hoped that Bucky would meet him in the afterlife.

And he didn't. 

Not for the first time, but the most for sure, Bucky wishes he died when he should have, world peace be damned. Someone else, someone better would have taken Bucky's spot, led missions, 'single (six handedly) finished the Germans off' much quicker and effectively than he could have, and probably still had the world to come home to.

Becca breaks the door down on day three sometime after the sun rises. Not so much as breaks it, but uses her Barnsey brain to leverage the hinges just right that the bottom slides of and the top thunks off soon after. “It’s fine,” she mutters, though Bucky doesn’t look perturbed. “Wait till you meet my fella. He’ll fix it. He can fix anything.”

She stares at him a moment but has her face much more composed today, a careful mask as she moves to sit by him on the floor.

“I'm so sorry, Bucky,” she murmurs and places a hand on his hip. Immediately, he tenses; in this position, a hand, the warmth, it doesn’t mean what he once knew it to mean. She draws it back and folds it into her lap, the mask slipping. “I should have been more persistent. Both times, the first when Steve said he wanted space, and then after I knew he was sick. He was so stubborn, there’d never be any changing that, but maybe I could have helped him sooner. Or at least if he’d known…” she trails off, unable to confirm what Bucky's life would have meant in Steve's death.

Steve would have known it would be this, and that would have made it all much more painful.

Bucky's voice is cruddy with disuse, but no matter; he knows he can scream like this, can scream and cry after longer silences. He also knows he can stay silent. Bucky knows a lot of things about himself he wish he didn't. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? I _asked_ you. I asked _you_ ,” he accuses, and he doesn’t care if it hurts. He’s hurting, Steve hurt, everyone should hurt.

“I’m so sor-”

“Don’t,” he cuts her off. He doesn’t want an apology; he wants Steve back. That won’t happen, so instead, though he knows it won’t help, he wants answers, he wants the full story so he can rightly be angry at everyone.

“You’d been through so much. You never said, but we were hearing stories in the papers, of what was really going on. Pa went white when we got the letter saying you were alive, where you had been. At first I thought it was in relief, but it was soon clear that it was anything but. He of all people knew what could happen in a war, could tell by your words what happened to you. I’ve never seen him like that, and it scared me. Scared us all, Bucky, as bad as hearing you’d died. We didn’t want you to be over there, all alone, knowing that you’d only be coming home to be alone.” It’s not good enough, not even when Becca whispers into the stale air, “We thought you might not come home at all if you knew.”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.

"I'm so sorry, Bucky, I am," she repeats, and Bucky doesn't like this reality, so he goes somewhere else, because these words are doing more damage than a German doctor ever could to him or Steve.

She must see it in his face, or maybe hours have passed. Whichever way, Becca leaves him, and his unspoken agreement alone.

The door is well broken, and since Becca dared to mention Steve's name in his room, the room they both grew up in, Bucky can see Steve everywhere. In the bed that they shared though his mother laid out the couch cushions, Bucky insisting that they wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable as sharing the thin mattress. In his bookcase that Steve read top to tail time and time over. In the corner drawing something that Bucky wasn’t allowed to look at, in his dresser wearing three of Bucky’s jumpers and still not being warm enough, under the bed hiding from Winnie when Bucky was banned from seeing Steve, even though it was always Steve who got them into the trouble that barred their company in the first place.

Steve is everywhere, and nowhere at all, and Bucky can’t stand it.

He rolls up off the ground, dizzy and not quite in Brooklyn, and stumbles to the bathroom. He doesn't need it but uses it anyway and drinks from the tap, before taming his hair and splashing his face so he can pretend he’s not the mess he is before heading back downstairs. He’s good at pretending, perhaps even better since the war, and he’s almost able to bend reality to suit him these days.

With no hat to fumble on this time, Bucky shoves his hand into his pocket and clenches hard, nails drawing blood before mustering a soft smile. 

“I'm sorry I ruined the roast, Ma,” he says hesitantly from the doorway. 

Winnie smiles, soft as well, but it’s sadder than he’s ever seen. “It's okay, it's kept. We’ll just have it for lunch. Sit, help Lottie with her chess game.”

Bucky sits but doesn't help, just watches, not caring, while Becca and Winnie prepare the roast for lunch, humming when questions are asked, and not humming when he realises they’ve stopped.

It’s not as much of a celebration as the Barnes’s hoped it would be, an awkward, silent sort of affair, that is uncomfortable when Bucky snaps at his mother for cutting his meat for him.

“No, Ma,” he hates the anger that’s crept into his own voice, the sad look his Ma and sisters are giving him, the warning at his tone his Pa shoots him. “I just-. I don’t need as much help as you think I do. It’s been over a year. I can get by.”

He knows why, but he still wishes the words didn’t make his mother cry.

"What the bloody hell did the army let you do for a year with no arm," George asks gruff, just as Alice says smally, "I thought it was-, You never said."

It threatens to make _him_ cry, heaving down at a slice of roast that's half in pieces much like he feels, torn sinew and muscle, charred and grew, dead. He shrugs.

“Will you ask, then? If you need help, will you ask?” It's Becca, his saviour, the only light he now sees in the world.

He nods, but he’ll never ask.

It's still uncomfortable, but Bucky really slams the gavel with strength they don't know about when he says he’d like to go see it.

He knows, straight away, when even George Barnes fingers press hard on his fork, and Becca, all brisk and business, though not unkind says, “There isn’t anything to see, Buck. The church wouldn’t let us get a headstone, wouldn’t give us a blessing or a right of committal without a body or a death certificate.”

It floors him for a minute, and into the silence of only scraping utensils, he asks, “Why?”

“They needed a cause of death in order to allow it.”

“Why?” He asks again. “They knew him. His whole life, he’d been going there. They knew got sick, they’d prayed for him enough times, why-” Bucky stops, and crams in a tasteless forkful of meat in attempt to distract himself.

It’s silent again, and Becca is unable to meet his eyes, her own filling with tears over her plate.

Surprisingly, it's Alice who answers, apparently the only one strong enough to. She’s soft, and pitying, when she says, “Lottie and I saw Steve at mass the day after your service. He asked to speak to the Reverend alone. We stayed around, to see if he was okay, and he quite wasn’t. He didn’t stop for us, and the Reverend wouldn’t tell us what he asked about.”

“I don’t understand,” Bucky says again, and doesn’t bother to wipe away the single tear that finally tracks down his cheek.

“He was terribly upset, Bucky. And everyone knew you were all the family that he had. Everyone knew what you meant to him.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” He feels stupid, with their eyes wide and with more pity than he ever wanted to know existed, like he should know.

She's a matter of fact as she states, “They wouldn’t bury him without a death certificate or a body because they thought he’d taken his own life.”

“I -,” Bucky’s throat is too dry to form the words, and the tears are streaming now. If he could swallow some, perhaps he could talk. It's something he tried, over there, licking desperately at the salt on his face when they deprived him. “He wouldn’t.” Wouldn’t he? “He _didn’t._ He was sick. You said-”

“We don’t know that he didn’t,” Alice points out. “We only know what Mrs Johnson told Becca in a small hallway, and that wasn’t enough for the church. We had our own little service, Ma’s taken it down just for now, but when you feel a bit better we can have another.”

And that's it. Just like before.

All that was to show of Steve's life was an unmarked grave in undescribed dirt somewhere, or depending on what he was sick with, some ashes burnt far away so disease didn't spread. It's what was meant to be of Bucky in that factory, yet somehow, he survived, and Steve didn't.

Bucky sits there and cries, they eat the rest of their first family meal together, in over two years, in silence, save for his own stifled sobs.

He goes back to his room after that, because he’s not quite sure what else to do. In his mind, coming home meant spending all his time with Steve. Going to Coney Island again, eventually, or dragging Steve to the dance halls, or even just grocery shopping and sitting in the same room in silence.

His family's silence is different, and laced with grief for someone who is dead and someone who is still living, and he can’t be around it.

Now, he has to work out a life without Steve. He doesn’t know what that is, he’s never known, because over in the war, that was not living, therefore it was not living without Steve.

He doesn’t want to know what that is.

Apparently, it's holing up in his corner, with sporadic tears and thoughts that go nowhere, for what he thinks might be a week or so. 

His family mostly leaves him be, except for meal times, and it’s hurting them all. Becca, he knows the most, but only because she’s the boldest to tell him so.

“We can’t help you if you spend all day locked inside, Bucky. I know it’s not what you want to be doing, but I think things might start to feel better if you just even come into the living room and have some tea.”

Bucky just grunts, but it’s not like he can turn his back to her – it’s quite awkward to lie on his left. And the door isn't fixed, so his back would be exposed.

“At least talk to me about it. Come on, B, what’s going through your head?”

“You know what’s going through my head,” he mumbles.

“I do, but that’s not talking about it.”

“I-, I can’t Becca,” and he doesn’t need much more, his voice cracks and Becca just smiles at him sadly. She doesn’t try to reach out again, and he’s grateful, and they sit in silence until Bucky’s melted brain can think of anything else to say. “Maybe if you told me earlier, I’d be ready now,” he accuses, because through the constant churning of feelings in his stomach, he’s still so angry at the deceit. It’s hypocritical, he knows, but he doesn’t care for the politics right now.

“You of all people know that time wouldn’t change anything. You never told us about your arm for just as long,” Becca points out.

Bucky grunts. More truth and hypocrisy.

But his reasoning even with a faulty brain was valid. They needn't know until his final letter before home, only just to prepare them for the shock, and kept out all the details. They didn’t ask, thankfully, just accepted that Bucky was a soldier, and that's what happened in war.

They could never know that Bucky was a lab rat, and experiment, and it wasn't war, wasn't even genocide anymore; Bucky was the tester for annihilation. The arm wasn't even the worst of it, it was just the part that failed so visibly. Even in the dark, through the pain, he could see _them_ shooting it up with all sorts of whatevers, could see the chunks that got cut out and the disappointment on the weasel's face when it didn't grow back. He could hear the German, the little that he knew, of disease burning through his veins, sepsis and worse, blackening his left arm just as the Allies came to burn down the factory. Infection was known to kill twice as many soldiers than bullets and bombs, so the field medic wrapped a band around his arm tight so the infection didn't spread, so tight Bucky thought his arm was going to fall off. The Private, another James, said both might still happen, but laid down in someone else's blood and fire around him, Bucky had supposed he had no soul left so losing an arm didn't bother him much. With a nod, he just bit down on the leather belt for the whole trip back to stop his stomach clenching in time with the throbbing at the band point, till suddenly it was dark. And when they got back to a base camp exactly that happened; his arm fell off with the help of a saw of some sorts and the infection reached his heart anyway. He came to regaled as a miracle, because it wasn't science for sure that saved him.

Bucky knew it was not God’s doing that saved him but man’s, one man in fact.

And he’d stayed, anyway. Because he wanted to burn that man in the same sort of hell that he's flamed upon Bucky.

“This is more, though. This is a life, not just-, not just an arm,” Bucky says feebly.

“You know Ma doesn’t see it like that.”

“What?”

“She thinks. I mean, I know she still knows you as her son, but she thinks you lost so much more than just an arm in the war,” Becca says, and slides down the wall, and hugs her knees tight.

“I lost more here in Brooklyn than I did in Britain,” he murmurs, and for the first time, Becca's tears spill over.

“Steve was my friend too,” she says, and there’s nothing he can say. “I lost one brother, Bucky, and you’re making me so scared I’m going to lose two.”

And yet, he can’t find it in himself to be sympathetic for her.

He pushes himself up instead. "Well then, let's go."

Bucky's made it to the bottom step before Becca can scramble after him.

“Where are you off to?” His mother asks in surprise, hands caught half wet and wringing on a tea towel. 

“I’m going,” he clears his throat. “I’m off to see Mrs Johnson." When his mother opens her mouth in protest, he argues, "To see if she kept any of my stuff. I have no clothes,” he says, and it's partly true. None of his old clothes will fit him, not him being half the size he used to both in weight and upper body limbs.

"I'm coming," Becca breathes breathless down the stairs, only just catching up.

"I- are you sure, dear?"

He doesn't answer, just grabs his father's coat from by the door even though it's not the weather, pulls the door and walks a familiar path. Becca's breath is exasperated behind him, but still following. 

He must be fast, who is he kidding, of course he's fast _now_ , but it's too fast for Becca, who pulls him back by the arm and links hers through it so she can keep his pace. 

"Christ, Bucky," she mutters.

If only she knew.

They walk down the street, it’s not far, further than Bucky’s been since he’s been back, but it’s not the distance that’s proving difficult. He knows Becca knows, but she keeps her feet firm and her gaze ahead, and asks, “Are you wanting me to come in?”

He's not quite sure, but he's not sure he should be trusted to be around civilians, especially one who's going to deliver terrible news to him, again. Out loud, he offers Becca a weak boon for her troubles so far. "Well of course. I didn’t bring a handkerchief.”

He forces his body not to wander to where it's being pulled, rather down the hall three doors.

They knock, but there’s no answer. It makes him fidget, if Mrs Johnson weren’t to be here. Whatever’s in here will be awful, but living a life without it will be worse, he’s sure of it.

“We ought to have called ahead,” Becca murmurs, but Bucky shakes his head.

“She was always slow. She is old, you know.”

He gives Mrs Johnson a few more moments, of irregular heartbeats and rapid breathing and adrenaline in his veins, and just as his ticker is about to give up, the door creaks open.

She's the same as he remembers, a kind face with thinning hair, and wrapped up in winter clothes though it's nearly June, smelling of apples and smoke.

“Oh,” Mrs Johnson says as she stares dumbly at him. “Oh! Bucky!" And then the excitement fades. "Oh, Bucky. And Becca. Come in, come in.” She ushers them in, closing the door not far behind him. As he’d expected, she takes a step back, and inspects him, waits for instructions to twirl but they never come. It’s not a new feeling, but he shifts uncomfortably as her eyes linger a moment too long on his left, where the sleeve hangs limply, fingers scrunching in to the coat opening as Becca pats his arm where hers meet his, still linked. “Sit, sit,” comes next, followed by, “Tea? Coffee?”

“Two coffees, if you please,” Becca answers for him. “Sugar, if you can spare.”

“Your brother gave it all and more for America, so even if I couldn’t, I would for him.”

He thinks he smiles, an action that is polite, not because he wants to.

Mrs Johnson doesn’t buy it. She shuffles around, looking no older than the last he saw her, though it’s been almost two years by now.

“I’d ask about your service but I have a feeling that’s not what you’re here for.”

Again, it’s Becca who answers, plucking the words from his mind, but speaking them surer. “Maybe next time, Mrs Johnson.”

“I thought so,” she says, still pacing her apartment, by now clearly looking for something. It’s cluttered, but organised, as she skips over sections and looks through half piles and ignores others. “Aha,” she exclaims. She turns, and now with the goods in her hands, she seems hesitant, unsure of her mission. “I kept all the letters you sent. They, they just kept piling. And I couldn’t bear to throw them out. Nor could I think to answer them. It’s not the sort of news you want over there. I saw the effects of it, in return, and I didn’t want to be that person,” Mrs Johnson says by way of apology, and hands him the stack.

It’s more than Bucky remembers sending, but looking at it, it’s not enough, it’s definitely not two years’ worth of letters. Even though they’re unopened, he feels ashamed of them. Especially the first that would have been unopened. A coward's letter.

“Can you-,” he swallows, looking at the slim wad in his hands, heavy with words he’s never said to anyone else, baring his soul. He’s not going to reread them. Burn them, perhaps. “Becca's said, but can you tell me?”

“I’m afraid there’s not much to say. I just woke up one day after a restless sleep with all the movement going on, and they told me he was gone. Then they were gone before I could even ask any questions.” 

She finishes, and it’s an awful silence. Becca recounted more, and she wasn’t even there.

“Was he okay? The last time you saw him?” Bucky tries. 

“Oh yes. Rather tired, I'd seen that look before, but very much okay. More so if he was coming out of a sickness, rather than entering it. He certainly had high spirits,” and she laughs a little fondly. At Bucky's confusion, she smiles, and it's genuine. “The lady, the nurse, I suppose, she was English. She said she'd take good care of him.” Bucky still doesn’t say anything, he’s not sure what there is to say, and Mrs Johnson continues. “They seemed quite taken with each other.”

Oh.

“Yes, I was a little shocked, too. She was quite-, well, she was quite something. And astoundingly beautiful. I think having someone that beautiful would be good for anyone. But yes. It was obvious he respected and liked her, and her the same.” 

Bucky laughs. Of all things, laughs. It’s been so long since he’s laughed and it feels odd, but it does a little to release the pressure inside of him. He’s laughing because if it had been him, someone would have said he made indecent eyes, but of course Steve could show his admiration through respect. 

“You may have liked her, even,” Bucky doubts it. _Highly_ doubts it. “I barely overheard them, and I certainly didn't mean to, but she seemed far more stubborn than he, and she was able to change his mind on something.” 

“You musta heard wrong then,” he says, still chuckling, because the whole thing is unbelievable, absurd.

“I’m old, but I’m afraid it’s my mind that’s going, not my ears, Bucky, dear.” 

She’s so sincere that Bucky wants to believe her, and for Steve’s sake, he allows himself.

It’s a good thing, he tries to tell himself. He says it again, more forcefully, as Becca and Mrs Johnson sip silently at their drinks. It's a good thing that Steve had found someone in the end, someone who wasn’t Bucky to help him through the long nights, someone other than Bucky to let the last thing he knew was that he was loved.

Only it bubbles and boils, an awful jealousy, that's also his anger at Becca, at himself, at Mrs Johnson and this nurse, and he doesn’t even know why, at Steve.

“How come you didn’t even know he was sick?” Bucky's head snaps up. “I told you to keep an eye out. You knew what he looked like, when he was getting bad.”

“Didn't see him much, if I'll be honest. Not long after you left, Steve said he had to go away, for work, and wouldn’t be back for a while. I don’t know what it was, so don’t ask, but I know when he can’t lie for shit he just doesn’t speak at all, so I never knew what he was doing. He packed up for a few weeks, maybe until, I'm not sure, end of July. He was rather tired, but nothing some good rest didn't seem to fix. After that it was a few days away here and there, he never said but always had a bag so I assumed it was travelling. After your service he kept to himself a lot, and it wasn't much longer after that the doctor and the nurse showed up and said it was time. I suppose he must have known when about the time the letter came, he definitely looked ill, but perhaps he really was ill in other ways-," Mrs Johnson stops herself but not quick enough for the awful words to creep their way into Bucky's ears, "And that was it."

That's it.

Bucky never wants to think those two words ever again. 

They hit him harder than Alice, or Becca's words, the opposite of the solace he’d been hoping to find in his old apartment block. It’s that which really cements it, that Steve is gone, is _gone_ , and Bucky can’t help but doubt how.

“I think we’ll go now,” Becca says gently. “Thank you for the coffee, Mrs Johnson.”

“Of course. The apartment is rented by now, of course, and the men moved all your old things before I even knew what was happening, but I shall be here if you ever would like to visit again.”

Becca smiles tightly, and Bucky says nothing as he’s lead out a familiar door, into a familiar hallway. He stops a moment at what used to be his home, but no longer will ever be, before Becca tugs him and takes the letters from his hand. They’re already crumpled.

“Bucky,” she tries, softly, then louder as he walks away quickly, down the familiar stairs with still the third step broken. “Bucky! I- Where are we going?” Becca asks as he stride off in a direction opposite to the Barnes residence.

“I’m going to get him a goddam grave.”

She has to run again to keep up, and continue running as this time Bucku doesn't slow with an arm crooked in his. She's almost flying as she gasps, "I'm not sure going onto hallowed ground with those words is going to work."

"Better than whatever you did," he bites back.

“Bucky, we didn’t not try,” she says, rather hurt.

He stops suddenly, and turns to her. “I know, I know that Becs, I’m not saying that. I just-. It’s not fair. It’s not fair,” he hisses through clenched teeth, and that’s when the tears come.

“I know. It’s not. But we tried, and tried again, and they said no. What are you planning to do about it?”

Bucky’s not had to charm anybody since the night before he shipped out, and even then Dot didn’t need much charming to take him home and let him slide his fingers up her skirt, and then some more, because he knew if he went home to Steve he’d try for something as intimate as what he was doing with Dottie, and then cry and shake and beg Steve to hide him away from the world so that he didn’t have to step foot onto a battlefield.

That sort of charm he’s not going to try with a Reverend, of course, but he has other ways. It will be hard, to fake it, but he thinks most of it is natural, and the rest is surely muscle memory.

If anything, he’s got a good fall back.

“You be surprised at how many people are willingly to lend a hand when you’re missing one.”

She smacks him firmly in the middle of the chest, with an angry press of her lips, then sighs. “Too soon.” They stare off at each other a while, and she concedes. “And that was terrible. I’d honestly hoped for better. Mine will be better than that.”

“I look forward to it,” and she links his arm through his again, and lets him lead her to the church.

“James,” a pinched and wrinkled face beneath a habit says as he walks down the pews. “Oh, James! We prayed for your soul when Steven asked us. God loves us all, even if you don’t love him,” and he’s not surprised that she manages a dig in at him. She knows he was only there for Steve and wine.

“Thank you, Sister Helen,” he says politely. “It seemed you did good work and guided my soul home safely," he can't help that sarcasm, and Becca shuffles uncomfortably beside him. Sister Helen doesn't seem to pick up on it, perhaps his acting is better than he thought. "Is the Reverend in?”

He is, and Bucky doesn’t have to be as pathetic as he’d planned. Once he adds in a few good natured smiles, some learnings of how his faith protected him and his brother's on the field, in less than 15 minutes later the Reverend is sympathetic to the cause and Bucky walks out with a time for a burial in three days and instructions on how to buy a headstone.

“You’re still a charmy little bastard,” she mutters almost angrily, almost in awe.

He's an idiot, and still using a different mind, so he doesn't even think before he quips, “Didn’t do me much good over there. Tried to beat it out of me but guess it didn’t really work.” He stops only at the gasp, to se her hand pressed tight over her mouth, eyes wide. “Oh god...ness, Becs. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

He doesn't even finish it. Of course he means. As long as she never has to know how much he means it.

“Was it awful?” She whispers, and he shrugs. “How are you-. Bucky, how are you even here?”

“Just closed my eyes and thought of England,” he shrugs.

“Bucky.”

“Thought of home. Of all of you. Of Steve,” he looks down the street, not wanting to see her reaction.

She takes her time, and when she's able to push it down a little, she offers, “I’m glad we were able to help, just a little.”

He slings his good arm around her and presses a kiss firmly into her temple.

“Did Steve tell you about his job?” Becca asks, suddenly.

Bucky shakes his head, and impossibly more hurt creeps in. Mrs Johnson said it was soon after Bucky left, and even Becca knows.

But like his death, Bucky hadn't.

“Oh,” she says, and her eyes water a little. But it’s not in sadness, this time, for the first time in a while. “Oh, _Bucky_ ,” she gasps. “He was so happy. He was so _proud_ ,” she says.

“Yeah?” Bucky questions, inviting more. It’s nice to hear these things Steve enjoyed, that it wasn’t all bad in the end. The woman who talked back, a job he liked, all things he'd wanted but never seemed to get.

“It was working with _Howard Stark_ ,” she says, and the excitement in her voice manages to make even him smile a little. “He said you’d be more annoyed by Howard than you’d like him, but no matter.”

“What’s someone like Stevie doing with Howard Stark?”

Becca grimaces, but Bucky doesn’t correct the tense.

“I’m not sure he really knew, either. But he liked it. There was some travel, he did mention he'd been to New Jersey for a few weeks and it was every bit as bad as you always made it out to be," Bucky laughs again, impossibly, at that, "But he said he felt like he was really helping, he was going to make a difference.”

The thoughts of Steve being happier than Bucky will ever be again are enough to distract him on the walk to the craftsman the Reverend had suggested. With the promotion came good money, most of which he’d sent to his family, and doesn't have any reservation about using to buy a nice, modest headstone that even Steve wouldn’t shirk at.

It's what he thinks of the three days between now and then, when he does nothing else but lie in his spot in his room, and it's what he grapples with when he makes an order for enough flowers for three Rogers' grave for two years.

And then, in a suit that he'd last worn to a different Rogers' funeral that has extra material everywhere even when his Ma carefully pins up the left sleeve, there's nothing that can lessen the effect of putting to action his plan.

The service is awful, much worse than he thought it could ever be, and made worse by his insistent sisters who cry all over again, especially Alice. He’s quite sure she was enamoured by him, even as young as she was.

But it doesn’t matter now.

It's quite a miserable affair, on a miserable day that Bucky is vindictively glad no one else will enjoy the date that Steve is buried, and this being their third ceremony, they're not as keen to hang around as Bucky is. And it's all he wants, is to be alone with a patch of grass and stone that are, effectively, meaningless. When they make to leave, Bucky insists he'll walk home after, like Steve did after Sarah, and for once, their pity outweighs their concern and Bucky finds himself alone.

Being alone with Steve, without Steve, is worse. And his broken brain can think of nothing to say.

Nothing, except, “Ten years longer than the doctors said, I guess. The S in S.G.Rogers stands for stubborn, I’ll give you that, you stupid fucker.”

Bucky almost wonders if it would have been better if Steve had died when he was meant to, at two, then eight, then fifteen, that Bucky might not feel the loss so much now. He knows he shouldn't, that he should be grateful for the extra time, for the lessons Steve taught him, for the love he showed him, but right now, his brain has kicked into self preservation mode. It's good at that; he's living proof.

So no, in front of this grave, in the borough they grew up in, in a city Bucky so desperately wanted to see again but now never wants to know, Bucky lets himself feel the full weight of Steve's death.

And that's it.


End file.
